John Slater is an Assistant Professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department in the College of Engineering at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware. He received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, graduating Magna Cum Laude, where he was a recipient of the Danielson Endowment Scholarship and the James S. Jones Memorial Scholarship. He received a PhD in Biomedical Engineering with a Graduate Portfolio Degree in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology from the University of Texas at Austin where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, Department of Biomedical Engineering Tom Collins Fellow, and College of Engineering Thrust Fellow. He was a National Institutes of Health Nanobiology Postdoctoral Training Fellow and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Postdoctoral Training Fellow in the Bioengineering Department at Rice University and a Research Scientist in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Duke University.
He has received a number of awards including a 2018 NSF CAREER Award, was designated as an Emerging Leader in Biological Engineering by the Journal of Biological Engineering in 2019, a Biomedical Engineering Society Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Rising Star Junior Faculty Award in 2018, a Research Summit Award from Delaware INBRE, a Dean’s Award for Excellence in Service and Community Engagement from the University of Delaware College of Engineering in 2019, and is a two-time recipient of the University of Delaware Research Foundation Award.
His research focuses on the development and implementation of biomimetic materials to investigate the roles of microenvironmental cues on cell fate decisions and to generate vascularized, microphysiological systems to model physiological and pathological processes with a focus on cancer and dementia.